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Reports reveal that the rate of low literacy in the United States is higher than some of the third world countries and costs the healthcare industry over $70 million every year.

In 2013, Washington, D.C. was ranked the most literate American city for the third year in a row, with Seattle and Minneapolis close behind.

Long Beach, CA was ranked the country’s most illiterate city, followed by Mesa, AZ, and Aurora, CO.

What is the literacy rate in the world?

The global literacy rate for all males is 90.0% and the rate for all females is 82.7%. The rate varies throughout the world with developed nations having a rate of 99.2%(2013); Oceania having 71.3%; South and West Asia having 70.2% (2015) and sub-Saharan Africa at 64.0% (2015).

Russia: The country with the highest literacy rate is Russia with almost 53% of the population has tertiary education. It is estimated that 95% of adults in Russia have higher secondary education and the country spends some 4.9% of GDP on education.

List of U.S. states by educational attainment

State

% High school graduate

Rank

Montana

91.8%

1

Minnesota

92.4%

2

New Hampshire

92.

3

Wyoming

92.3%

3

What is the least educated city in America?

8: Louisiana—Lafayette. …

7: North Carolina—Hickory/Lenoir/Morganton. …

6: California—Fresno. …

5: California—Modesto. …

4: California—Bakersfield. …

3: California—Visalia/Porterville. …

2: Texas—Brownsville/Harlingen. …

1: Texas—McAllen/Edinburg/Missio

The stats back up this claim: 85 percent of all juveniles who interface with the juvenile court system are functionally illiterate, and over 70 percent of inmates in America’s prisons cannot read above a fourth grade level

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June Williamson, the author of “Retrofitting Suburbia” and architecture professor at the City College of New York, said there are numerous ways failing malls can survive in the future. Williamson says large popular department stores that are the anchor outlets for malls — currently suffering as new shopping centers are built — will most likely become other businesses that could benefit from the big footprint, like fitness centers, churches, offices, public libraries, and even medical clinics.

Food courts could become gathering spaces for community groups or daycare centers, and the wide open spaces of underused atriums could be the site for concerts or fashion shows or serve as car showrooms. While smaller stores forced out as rents increase will most likely turn into businesses that have community functions, such as apartments, public libraries, indoor farms, and refrigerated spaces for processing food for local restaurants or grocery stores.

DMV, town halls, and libraries are increasingly in malls where the public government can interact with the public. A farmers market could fill a mall’s sprawling parking lot.

Malls could target a specific ethnic demographic, or evolve into a “destination mall” to attract shoppers from the entire region — like a mega-mall in New Jersey called American Dream Meadowlands expected to open in 2018.

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/ A young passenger uses JetBlue’s facial-recognition system at Logan Airport in Boston on June 15, 2017.

Georgetown University researchers have released yet another report warning of the potential dangers and ineffectiveness of the beginnings of routine facial recognition scanning by certain airlines at several airports nationwide.The new report, which was released Thursday, comes on the heels of a related 2016 report showing that half of Americans’ faces are already in a facial recognition database. The report concludes.

Made of two stacked layers of graphene, diamene temporarily becomes harder than bulk diamonds under impact(Credit: Ella Maru Studio)
The research was led by Prof. Elisa Riedo, scientists there have determined that two layers of stacked graphene can harden to a diamond-like consistency upon impact. Graphene is made up of carbon atoms connected together in a honeycomb pattern, and it takes the form of one-atom-thick sheets. The new material diamene is made up of just two sheets of graphene, upon a silicon carbide substrate. It is depicted as being light as foil – in its regular state. When sudden mechanical pressure is applied at room temperature, though, it temporarily becomes harder than bulk diamond.

The material was considered by associate professor Angelo Bongiorno, who developed computer models which indicated that it should work, as long as the two sheets were aligned correctly. Riedo and colleagues then conducted tests on samples of actual diamene, which backed up Bongiorno’s findings.

Interestingly, the hardening effect only happens when two sheets of graphene are used – no more or no less. Scientists at Rice University have had success in absorbing the impact of “microbullets” using graphene that’s stacked 300 layers thick.

In a new study carried out by researchers from the University of Montreal, scientists examined the link between 3D-platform games and growth in different brains areas among older people. They were particularly interested in the gray matter in a part of the brain called the hippocampus, which is used for memory building. The loss of gray matter in the hippocampus is associated with neurological diseases, such as Alzheimer’s.

Their findings indicated that the Super Mario 64 training led to increased gray matter in the hippocampus, along with another structure called the cerebellum, which is important for motor control and balance.

The scientists hypothesized that 3D platformers are good because they ask people to explore a new environment, and to memorize it. When people do that, they form a cognitive map, meaning an internal representation of the environment, which they can then use to navigate. We know from past research involving both humans and rodents that this promotes activity in the hippocampus.

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While social media can provide you with publicity it can also bring pitfalls

Facebook has acknowledged that too much social media can be detrimental to a people’s mental health.

The company is coming under increasing scrutiny about its impact on society.

A former Facebook exec recently said social networks are “destroying how society works.”

Facebook director of researcher David Finsberg and research scientist Moira Burke, hypothesize that reading about others online might lead to negative social comparison,and perhaps even more so than offline, since people’s posts are often more curated and flattering.

Facebook also cited research showing the positive impact of social media. “In sum, our research and other academic literature suggests that it’s about how you use social media that matters when it comes to your well-being.”

“In general, when people spend a lot of time passively consuming information — reading but not interacting with people — they report feeling worse afterward. In one experiment, University of Michigan students randomly assigned to read Facebook for 10 minutes were in a worse mood at the end of the day than students assigned to post or talk to friends on Facebook. A study from UC San Diego and Yale found that people who clicked on about four times as many links as the average person, or who liked twice as many posts, reported worse mental health than average in a survey. Though the causes aren’t clear, researchers hypothesize that reading about others online might lead to negative social comparison — and perhaps even more so than offline, since people’s posts are often more curated and flattering. Another theory is that the internet takes people away from social engagement in person.”

But Facebook also counters this with evidence that engaging with others online “is linked to improvements in well-being,” and that Facebook can have other positive impacts.

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The New York City Council yesterday passed legislation seeking to address problems with Algorithms which can determine which school a child can attend, whether a person will be offered credit from a bank, what products are advertised to consumer, and whether someone will receive an interview for a job. Government officials also use them to predict where crimes will take place, who is likely to commit a crime and whether someone should be allowed out of jail on bail. The algorithms used in facial recognition technology, for example, have been shown to be less accurate on Black people, women, and juveniles.

The new bill seeking the signature of Mayor Bill de Blasio. States:

This bill would require the creation of a task force that provides recommendations on how information on agency automated decision systems may be shared with the public and how agencies may address instances where people are harmed by agency automated decision systems.

The task force would need to be formed within three months of the bill’s signing, and importantly it must include “persons with expertise in the areas of fairness, accountability and transparency relating to automated decision systems and persons affiliated with charitable corporations that represent persons in the city affected by agency automated decision systems.”